Matilda’s Mermaid Birthday Outfit

So as I mentioned before, Miss Matilda wanted a ‘Mermaid Under the Sea’ birthday party this year for her 4th birthday. Sounded good to me! I love all things nautical and beachy, so I thought this party would be pretty easy to pull off and it turns out that it was just that. I’ll share the party details with you tomorrow, but for now, I wanted to share the little birthday party outfit I made for Matilda.

For me, every good party starts with fabric inspiration. Matilda wanted to focus on blue and pink since those are her two favorite colors. I have been so busy this summer that I did not have time to order any fabric for her dress, I had browsed around online, but hadn’t found anything that was just right. So one Saturday afternoon I headed over to our local Joann’s and just really hoped that they carried some type of mermaid fabric that I liked or that was the proper colors for the party. And low and behold, there was the perfect fabric……..’Merry Mermaids’! I was so darn excited. It had kind of a salmon pink, but I was pretty sure we could make it work. Most importantly, I knew Miss M. would love it and I just thought the mermaids were darling. Plus it was 40% off……can’t beat that!

When I brought the fabric home, I knew we needed some other prints to go with it. You know I can’t just have one single print on an outfit. I started playing around in my fabric stash and found this great salmon pink from Art Gallery Fabrics to pull out the reddish pink in one of the mermaid’s hair and then this multi-sized dot from one of Sandi Henderson’s earlier lines pulled it all together.

I wanted to make a longer top for her party since we were surprising the girls with a bounce house. I thought jumping around in a dress might be a little difficult, but a top with leggings would work just great!

This top is a combination of two of my sewing patterns. The bodice is from the Charlotte Apron Dress and then I extended the strap piece to make it a knot style dress. The skirt is from the Miss Matilda Dress and Top cut at the top length, but with a 2″ band of fabric added at the bottom. The bodice on the Charlotte dress is shorter than the Miss Matilda, so that’s why I needed the extra added length.

I also used the side sash pieces (the shorter length for the top) from the Miss Matilda pattern, but cut them the same length, sewed them into the side of the bodice and had them tie in a bow in the back of the top.

The bodice is my favorite part since I got to play with trims and embellishing. Have I told you how much I love rickrack? Um……yeah, you already know. All the embellishing on the bodice was done prior to dress construction. I just drew out a curved pattern piece for the front. First I added the trim down the center, then added the outer rickrack and finally added the blue, tiny rickrack on top. So easy, but such a sweet detail.